


Good Etiquette Demands I Remain Soft And Accessible In The Face Of My Own Ending

by ktfics



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Post-New Dangan Ronpa V3, vr au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 00:58:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18680887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktfics/pseuds/ktfics
Summary: Kokichi is a corpse long before he dies.Kaito was never supposed to live through the killing game.





	Good Etiquette Demands I Remain Soft And Accessible In The Face Of My Own Ending

**Author's Note:**

> The way-too-long title of this fic is from the song Icicles by the Scary Jokes. Follow me on my tumblr @dykeenvy if you want to talk oumota!

Kokichi is a corpse long before he dies.

Kokichi looks at himself in the mirror and practices sewing up the corners of his own mouth with his needle-like fingers until it’s an automatic gesture. Kokichi thinks that he never had to teach himself how to cry, he had to teach himself how to stop.

A body is a body, nothing more and nothing less, and Kokichi allows his legs to prance around the academy and his hands to burn the wood of bridges that never got the chance to be built but really, the last of his senses got knocked right out of him along with the shot put ball that hit Amami.

Kokichi strikes a match and realizes that the bridges were made of his own body all along. Kokichi cremates himself and attends his own funeral and it’s all very funny, isn’t it, how fifteen other people sent him the invitation but didn’t bother to show up. Kokichi starts to laugh and his eyes water in the same way they would if he was crying, and god, it really is very funny.

Kokichi is a corpse as soon as he decides that it’s his job to make the ugly decisions that will keep everyone safe and not to be loved. Kokichi is born a corpse and that’s okay, really, because people allow him to pretend for a little while that he is something more than an urn that’s been painted real pretty.

Kokichi’s hands shakily grip a dry erase marker and detail his own eulogy, and his classmates’ eyes water as he reduces them to tears and the audience’s eyes water as they laugh and laugh at his audacity and Kokichi’s eyes water as he does both.

Kokichi has been touched by many people that have wanted him for whatever reason and he realizes when he’s very young that being loved is just a synonym for getting close enough to dig your fingers into a wound. Kokichi reduces himself to ash and he claims that no one can hurt him and his eyes water as a hand grips his throat or brushes his cheek or pushes him down and it doesn’t matter if he’s laughing or crying now because the end result is the same; Kokichi makes a sound and the world doesn’t change. Kokichi opens his mouth to speak and it doesn’t really matter if it’s a truth or a lie because corpses don’t talk and the living don’t listen.

Kokichi could rewrite his own pyre for hours and the result is the same; he is dead and no one is around to provide the water that would put it out.

Kokichi dies surrounded by people that hate him and he wakes up surrounded by people that hate him and the building is still on fire and the paranoia never once leaves him.

\--

“Hey, has anyone seen Ouma recently?” Kaito sits down at their table in the cafeteria with a force that is normally reserved for arguments and not casual conversation.

Across from him, Shuichi frowns and puts a hand to his mouth. “Not since breakfast yesterday. But he’s normally pretty… scarce these days, isn’t he?” Momota shakes his head.

“Not around me. I mean, he usually at least lets me find him, y’know?”

“I… suppose.” Shuichi looks hard at Kaito in a way that Kaito is used to by now. He knows that the fact that he wants to find Ouma at all is hard for the other boy to understand; it’s hard for Kaito to understand, too, and it seems to confuse Ouma as well. But the first week after Ouma had woken up, he had wandered around the hospital like a ghost with that pale skin of his and Kaito doesn’t know what Ouma is to him but he knows that the last thing he had wanted to do was to actually kill him.

“Let him be scarce. If he doesn’t want to be found, that’s probably for the best.” Kaito meets Maki’s hard glare with one of his own, and her expression quickly turns to one of condescension. “I don't know why you’re even talking to that brat in the first place.”

Maki had kissed him. Maki had kissed him and he hadn’t kissed her back. Maki had kissed him the day after he had woken up like she hadn’t at all listened to what he had said about learning to love herself, and Kaito realizes now that when she looks at him, she sees him smiling and giving her a thumbs up and tunes out everything else.

Kaito may not be dead anymore but apparently he might as well be to these people, because they can’t seem to get the image of a martyr out of their eyes.

Kaito stands up from his seat once more with a scrape of his chair, his meal untouched in front of him. He thinks he could go off about how Ouma deserves a second chance just as much as the rest of them but he also thinks that the chance of the others actually processing the words he says and not just his tone of voice is very, very slim. Besides, he doesn’t quite think he has the energy to fuel anything more than the low thrum of agitation inside of him.

Kokichi had joked with him once that maybe they actually were dead and this was Hell and Kaito had agreed before he could remember what he was supposed to be. It’s the only recent memory he has where he wasn’t actively putting on a persona, and the spark of happiness and surprise he had experienced when Ouma wasn’t disappointed at the disappearance of his act makes him burn with shame. Kaito seems to do a lot of burning around Ouma.

Kaito doesn’t know when just helping others had stopped being enough of a life for him, but maybe it was when he finally got to space and saw not a hero but the reflection of a human being that couldn’t even save himself in the rocket ship’s small window.

But maybe that’s too poetic; maybe helping others had stopped being enough of a life for him as soon as his ended. Life is not what he thought it was; he was never destined to become a hero, he was destined to support the real hero and then die, alone and far, far away from everyone, whether it’s because he was literally in space or because he was metaphorically up on a pedestal. He was never supposed to live through the killing game.

Kaito loves seeing Shuichi and Maki so strong because of him but he also wants desperately, embarrassingly, to actually live, and he knows he isn’t strong enough yet to put that into words. He knows he can't do that and still be near them. And so, in his shame, he goes even further away from them, and doesn’t look back to see if they’re willing to follow.

\--

Kaito knocks on Ouma’s door for the fifth time that day, and receives no answer for the fifth time that day. The private hospital they’re being housed in isn’t that big, and he’s already checked all of the common areas that Ouma could possibly be hiding in. The only other option right now is that Ouma is in his room but he’s not answering his door for whatever reason.

The thought of Kokichi hurt, bleeding, incapacitated makes him nauseous in a way that causes Kaito to once again raise his fist to the door before he says “fuck it,” grabs the handle, and pushes into the room without caring for the other boy’s privacy anymore. The sight in front of him stops him dead in his tracks.

Ouma sits on the edge of his bed, a marker loosely held in his palm with his head cocked and eyes narrowed. Kaito follows his gaze to see the walls covered in words and scribbles at approximately Ouma-height.

Kaito walks forward, wordlessly, and begins to read. He feels like he’s back in the hangar, a script thrust into his hands with pages that are too crinkled to only be two days old.

“Ah, Momota-chan, I’m glad you’re here.” Kokichi mumbles the words so softly that Kaito wouldn’t even think he was talking to him if he hadn’t addressed him by name. “Double check this for me, will you?”

“Ouma, what is this…?” Kokichi reaches out and grabs on to Kaito’s wrist as soon as he gets close enough to his bed. Almost unconsciously, Kaito twists his hand around and slides it up until he can intertwine their fingers gently. Almost, but not quite.

“I could’ve done it right, I’m sure of it. I just need more time.” Kokichi’s fingers grip Kaito’s a little tighter, and he might’ve thought the pressure would have been uncomfortable if he didn’t know what the other boy could compare it to. Kaito just mirrors his movements instead.

Kokichi has planned and replanned the killing game out on the wall in front of them. He’s written out a list of what happened and what he could have done differently and what couldn’t have been fixed. Kaito reads his words with the same desperation that he had read Kokichi’s script in the hangar with.

For all the other boy had mocked Kaito for believing too hard in baseless hopes, he sure seems to do a lot of it himself.

“I failed the first time, but I can fix it, I know it.” Kaito feels his mouth grow dry.

“We… we didn’t fail, Ouma, we helped find the… the truth beyond the truth, or whatever.” Even he doesn’t believe his words as he says them.

“How did we find the truth beyond the truth when nothing was true to begin with?” Kokichi finally wrenches his eyes away from the wall in front of him and turns to face Kaito.

“So, what, we did nothing, is that it? Everything was pointless?” Kaito wants to yell the words but he realizes that instead of an argument leaving his mouth, it’s more of a dismal agreement.

Kokichi shakes his head. “A lie can have as much feeling behind it as any truth, Momota-chan.” 

Kaito scoffs. “Are you admitting that you actually had genuine feelings and shit during the game?”

“Are you?”

Kaito doesn’t reply, and just reads the words in front of them until they start to swell and expand and make sense and settle back down into being nonsense again. Still, he doesn’t say anything.

Kokichi’s voice should startle him when he speaks again, but Kaito finds the sound of his voice too familiar to really be scared. “It doesn’t matter anyways, the feeling behind it. Corpses don’t have feelings, Momota-chan.”

“We’re not corpses, dumbass.” Kaito mumbles the words and squeezes Kokichi’s hand as a reminder, which is still suspended in the air and holding onto his from Kokichi’s seat on his bed.

“No,” Kokichi finally admits, “We’re not. And isn’t that unfortunate?”

Kaito slumps down next to the other boy in a silent agreement and allows them both to pretend that they could do it all over again but better. Kaito sits back and allows them both to pretend that they would do it all over if they could, just for the chance to slow the dying a little bit.

Kaito sits next to Kokichi and together, they burn alive.

**Author's Note:**

> I can never tell if I'm writing these characters completely OOC or not but oh well, this was weird vent angst written at 3 am and I Do What I Want. Also, I swear I don't hate Maki and I'm sorry I keep writing her as such a bitch, my interpretation of her character is a lot more nuanced but Kaito's POV is intentionally biased. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this fic and thank you so much for reading!


End file.
